New Beginnings All Around

For me AND the birds...

Two Percent.

Everyone who terrifies you is sixty-five percent water.
And everyone you love is made of stardust, and I know sometimes
you cannot even breathe deeply, and
the night sky is no home, and
you have cried yourself to sleep enough times
that you are down to your last two percent, but

nothing is infinite,
not even loss.

You are made of the sea and the stars, and one day
you are going to find yourself again.  

-Finn Butler

To Boston, With Love.

While I am a Cape Codder through and through, I was born in Boston and spent the first three years of my life there. My parents were also raised in the city. In the wake of this week's events, here are my love letters to my hometown, years in the making.


Dear Boston Doctors,
When you weren't delivering dozens of Papapietro/MacLean babies through the years, you skillfully removed a ruptured appendix. You trudged with us through four arduous cancer journeys, each a long road so unending that they distorted my vision and completely and forcefully dissolved my many expectations of the future. Chemotherapy, radiation, surgeries...you were there. There is a reason you are respected by so many worldwide. You didn't just treat us. You knew us. And I say "us" because spirits can need treating, too. You gave us personalized tours of the equipment to ease our anxieties. You sent cards and flowers. When you couldn't save him, you cried too. Because he wasn't just your patient - he was your friend.  You paid personal visits in those last months (even though the nurses said that your rituals were unprecedented because of how many people you treat). But you insisted that you loved the man you treated for over twenty years, that he taught you lessons that you will never forget. But we loved you bigger. There is a major distinction between doctors and healers. And you are the healing kind. In my family's eyes, you are and always will be our heroes.
Love,
An Eternally Grateful Daughter of a Patient

Dear Fenway Park and the Boston Redsox,

I've written before about the priceless memories you've given me. I'll let that post do the talking. Thank you for a team to believe in. Thank you for one of the most important lessons I've ever learned: It's never about the final outcome. It's about spirit. It's about determination. When it comes down to it, life is really just unending faith. It's about hiding in the bathroom, praying as you wait for that final out of the 2004 World Series. You all sure know how to rally. Sweet Caroline never sounded so good, so good, so good. 

Love,

A Die-Hard Fan Who Would Go To A Game with Double Pneumonia To Cheer For You

Dear East Boston,
If you had a face, it would feature a luminous smile and wrinkles. The smile because you are the definition of a welcoming community, and the wrinkles because you have lived a lot of life. The grit, the sweat, the tears. You provided a young boy with friends of all races and backgrounds, and this boy would grow up and teach his daughter about tolerance. Because who can witness the violence of forced bussing and not want to change something? You have loyalty in your soul. Loyalty that would keep friends together through the shenanigans of childhood and adolescence, including sledding runs down a mountainous hill  into oncoming traffic (you are so ballsy). I want your guts. You would keep a young boy of eight under your watchful eye as he voluntary trekked to the racetrack every day after school, selling newspapers to support his dreams. How many kids do that? You are sacrifice and contribution. You are the start of so many family tapestries, the strings that hold generations of secrets and hopes together as you weave them through your solid hands.
Love,
A Wannabe Badass


Dear North End,
I took my redheaded Irish friend to the Saint Anthony's Feast when we were fourteen, and watching her mildly stupefied expressions made me realize that she had no idea what she had gotten herself into. But I knew you. I was confident that my Italian neighborhood would come through in all of your overwhelming, hospitable glory. In a blow as powerful as the Vespa that nearly ran me over on the streets of Naples last spring, you swept me off my feet like a forceful ocean wave. Hail Marys on the street? The rise and fall of my family's native chatter as it engulfed me? You are the sounds of home. Because of you and this feast, I recognize home. Because of you, I've had a window into my rich culture since I was old enough to say "aspetta!" (And I heard that one a lot growing up). I've learned to understand my roots, and, by extension, myself.
(And those cannoli won't eat themselves.)
Love,
Una Bambina Italiana


Dear Logan Airport,
I've written about you before also. If you were any other airport, I would probably want to spit on you. But how could I despise the gateway to so many of my comings and goings? You are a portal, a portal that I once entered lost and confused and returned having learned how to live again. How could I not love your view from the air as I watched, brimming with new realizations and dreams, as the sun mirrored my renewed spirit, its rays sprouting down to touch the sparkling harbor? I could just disappear into that shade of blue. Life is about both departures and arrivals. You are always my first set of outstretched arms, the gentle whisper ushering me across the skies to new adventures. You are the reflection of a cherished truth: Just because I leave to go exploring, that does not mean I will not find my way back home.
Love,
A Passport Junkie Who Just Wants to See Things


Dear Boston,
Dorothy said there's no place like home. And boy, do your rivers run deep. Expansive enough to reach me on the streets of Rome, where a man nodded at my Sox shirt, pointed to his hat with a stitched "B," and smiled. But I wasn't shocked. Because people fall in love with you. You don't only represent the beginning of this country. You are my beginning. You built me. You made me "Boston Strong."
I will always love that dirty water.
Love,
Maria

Woah.

Sonder
n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk. - The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

From a Different Lens

If only I knew then what I know now.

Last week while I was on break, I had the sudden urge to purge my room of unnecessary clutter. (Coffee may have had something to do with this spontaneous inspiration). My room is very clean, and I have always kept it that way. It's just cluttered. Between being away at college and going abroad last spring, I've taken on a bit of a nomadic lifestyle. I never feel like I'm totally settled in my Cape bedroom as far as my stuff is concerned, because summer hardly seems long enough for a complete revamping of decor or a rearranging of furniture. Physically, my room has hardly changed since I was in high school. There are several hints of the passing time though. Old collages have been replaced with black and white postcards from Paris, London, Rome, Krakow, Vienna, and other European cities. My Precious Moments cross from my baptism that used to hang next to my door is no longer there (it broke while I was in Italy. I was bummed about that). But there are some constants too, like the turquoise butterfly sculpture hanging on my high wall, its wings outstretched as if to guard me while I sleep.

I pondered these evolutions as I started on my desk. I was throwing away an old receipt when I found a light blue DVD in one of the cubbies on my desktop. It had nothing written on it. Curious, I brought it to my laptop and put it on....I never finished going through my room that day.

The DVD captured moments from my high school graduation. My family takes a lot of pictures but rarely captures anything on film, so I was trying to remember where this footage came from. Then it all came back to me - my uncle, my dad's brother, had taken it and made a copy for us. He gave it to me after my dad had passed away.

Technology is beautiful in this way. Beautiful because it captures moments that we are not necessarily aware of at the time. While I was lining up with the rest of my class in the school gym, donning my cap and gown and yellow cords, I had no idea that my dad was playing a practical joke on my aunt, his baby sister. The DVD captured it all. There they were, my large family, sitting down before the ceremony and taking up more than a few folding chairs. Then there's Dad's voice: "Watch this." He has a twinkle in his eye. (Someone once told me that I have "expressive" eyes. I wasn't sure what that meant at the time. Now I'm wondering if they come from him). He is laughing to himself, eyeing my aunt who is coming down the row of chairs. But I'll never know what the joke was or how it turned out, because the footage had cut before all was revealed.

I had no idea of these antics when I stood in the school gym, excited butterflies in my stomach. It wouldn't have ever even occurred to me at the time to think about what my family was doing outside without me on June 6th, 2009...

But I also didn't know that my dad would be dead in a year.

As I watch the footage, my mind is calculating dates. Fifteen months between my graduation and his death. Was the tumor already formed? Were his cells violently attacking each other as he laughed into the camera?

When you suffer a major loss, you become extremely attached to old mementos and reminders of your deceased loved one. I was devastated when the footage stopped after about twenty minutes. Like a drug addict, I found myself wanting more. More footage, more jokes, more anything. You want your fix, the high of seeing a side to your loved one that you haven't seen before, moments previously captured. I found myself hanging on to every word, every movement. And to think, I had him 24/7 before.

My grandma was also featured on tape. Back at our house following the ceremony, the camera finds her in the chaos of my friends and family. She is talking about handsome military guys she met at my cousin's graduation from Annapolis Naval Academy. She jokes that I have to go down to Maryland so that she can set me up with one.

Grandma too would die of cancer the next year. This would be the last time I would see her alive.

Who knew that my high school graduation would be so important? At the time, it seemed significant because I was at the top of my class and making the transition to college. Although that was all part of it, it was important because I was nearing the end. Nearing the end of my life on earth with two cherished members of my family.

I was innocent. Gloriously oblivious.

We all were.

If only I knew then what I know now. 

Today, I know better. In my younger years, I didn't know that the boy I worked with in the summers, the boy with the most beautiful smile, would die in a dirt bike accident at sixteen. I didn't know that I would lose my dad while I was still a teenager.

But how can we know these things?

We can't.

I think this is exactly why I can be very anxious about change. Previously, change meant death. To me, change means a grieving family. It means hopelessly trying to adjust to a world that is moving so quickly. It means feeling stagnant when friends and acquaintances seem to be moving forward with their lives in a glorious bubble of naivete.

I wish I could say I have all the answers now. I don't.

But I do live differently.

Sometimes I think that we all truly believe that if we can only grow up and get ourselves together, we will be immune to life's trials and tribulations. But that is not the case. Life doesn't work that way. I thought that going to college would be my only major transition during young adulthood. How wrong I was. We are not even remotely aware of our futures, our own futures or those of people we love the most. Just like we aren't aware of what's going on behind the scenes. Or from someone else's perspective. In this case, my uncle's.

When I work with grieving children at CZC, forgetting is a common concern. Some of the children were very young when they lost a parent, too young to remember him or her. They bring pictures and their surviving parents' stories. Stories and pictures. That's all they have left - other people's stories and accounts of the man or woman who brought the child into the world.

And that is exactly what this DVD footage represents for me. It presents a new perspective, a memory that I can now hold close to my heart. And when we put our perspectives together, they form the images of lives lived. Courageous battles fought. A loving grandmother. A fearless dad.

I've vowed to start paying attention. My mind is constantly capturing mental photographs. I have taken to writing down meaningful conversations I have with others and the poignant wisdom that comes my way. I want to have these memories.  Because now I know.

I see from a different lens.

Journal Excerpt. Age 11.

I found this in my school journal that I haven't looked at in over ten years. My eleven-year old self had some insight...

September 10th, 2002

A home is different from a house in a certain way. First, a house is an actual structure. It is a certain structure where you live. A home, in my opinion, is a place where you are happy and you feel loved. A house is just a building, but home is wherever you feel happy butterflies and are glad to live there.

What I See...

Yesterday, while standing at my kitchen window waiting for water to boil, my eyes scanned our backyard. The late afternoon sun bathed the rhododendrons, the porch, and the lawn that is slightly brown in protest of this winter's snow and its suffocating properties. 

Something caught my eye - four cardinals. The birds had perched themselves on one of the smaller bushes in the yard. That's interesting that so many of them are together, I thought. I don't think I have ever seen more than two of these birds at once. As I ponder this occurrence, my eyes find something on the ground in front of them. Something red, limp. 

I'm teary-eyed now. These cardinals are mourning the loss of one of their members. I came across a  news clip the other day, "Monkey Troop Mourns Loss of Baby." A baby monkey sniffs her friend lying on the ground, looks up wide-eyed, and lets out a shriek. "This is a confusing time for the other youngsters," the newsman explains. You don't say, I thought. Although he is likely reading off of a script, I applaud the news anchor for acknowledging the utter confusion that comes with a loss. Death is a part of life, but that does not take away its power to leave us in the dark, wondering just how this could have happened and why. 

These thoughts and emotions flood me again as I watch the cardinals. I'm sorry guys, I know how you feel. As I attempt some kind of communication through telepathy, they obviously don't hear me. But in a strange way, I really want them to. 

My pot of boiling water is overflowing by now, so I take my eyes away. I tell myself that I will go outside to the dead cardinal later. But once I remember this plan after dinner, it's dark. 

This morning, I am at the kitchen window again. I remember the cardinal, and look for it. But I don't even have to go outside. In the morning light, it is clear. The morning light presented a new revelation, one that I wasn't ready for.

The dead cardinal was not a dead cardinal at all. It was one of Rocky's red bones. 

The "cardinal" was just a bone. 

This news hits me like a ton of bricks. I am mourning a new loss. I am not grieving for a dead cardinal, but for something else. There is a deeper emotional need here. 

I really didn't want the "cardinal" to be a dead cardinal. Trust me. I have been known to cry when our cat kills a chipmunk. So I didn't really want to be watching cardinals mourning. Or did I? 

Part of me did want that. I wanted camaraderie. Even if just with the birds. I wanted to know that I wasn't alone. But another side of me was relieved for the cardinals. Relieved that these birds could just fly on their merry way. 

Confusion. Relief. Confusion. Relief. I'm sorry. For who? For what? 

I go outside, finally. It is, in fact, just a bone...

But I still see a cardinal.